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STEAM to Fuel Your Weekend – January 20

Between school, homework, practice and spending time with loved ones, it’s easy to miss out on the latest in science, technology, engineering, art and math. But don’t worry, Thinkery’s got you covered. Here are some of our favorite family-friendly discoveries from the previous week. It’s STEAM to fuel your weekend.

Photo credit: Daniel Ranalli.

We’ve explored salt art and sand art in previous STEAM to Fuel Your Weekend blogs, but never snail art. Yep, snail art! Massachusetts-based photographer Daniel Ranallihas spent 20+ years observing, charting and snapping the various movements of snails. The 20-year-old project, Snail Drawings, features side-by-side before and after photographs. The first image? A cool, patterned arrangement of Ranalli’s choosing. The second? The zany, unpredictable aftermath that traces each snail’s unique path in the sand.

No, that’s not some hazy, out-of-focus image of Earth. It’s a composite picture of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon! In January of 2005, the European Space Agency’sHuygens space probe cut through Titan’s thick haze and transmitted photographs back to the Cassini spacecraft before its batteries ran out. The pics, recently released by NASA, depict an eerie, Earth-like world of streams, lakes, rain, winds and wonder. Learn more about this magical, planet-like moon!

Cassini, which has been studying the ringed planet and its moons since 2004, is expected to take its final, fatal plunge into the planet’s atmosphere later this year—but not before collecting rarely-seen images from Saturn’s rings and its surface. We can’t wait to see what it captures!